Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4) Read online

  I seated my PsyLED service weapon in its Kydex holster and picked up one of John’s old shotguns as the large van turned into my drive. There was a logo on the side of the van, but the sun was glaring off the van windows and into the house, so I couldn’t make it out. However, the vehicle wasn’t a church truck, so I unwound a bit, watching as the van eased down the drive and parked next to my Chevy C10. I walked out onto the front porch, ready to do battle if necessary. It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last time the churchmen of God’s Cloud of Glory Church tried to take me back for punishment. Women didn’t leave the church without repercussions.

  A familiar frame climbed out of the truck and I broke open the shotgun as Brother Thaddeus Rankin of Rankin Replacements and Repairs emerged into the heat. “Hello, the house,” he shouted into the glare. It was a country greeting, a visitor calling out to the house during the day, when a farmer and family would be out in the fields, working, informing them they had visitors.

  “Welcome and hospitality,” I called back. “It’s cool on the porch. You want some tea?”

  “That would be mighty welcome, Sister Nell,” he said, climbing the steps into the shade of the porch. He stopped dead at the sight of the shotgun. “You been having more trouble from that church of yours, Sister Nell?”

  “Not my church,” I said, repeating the denial as I always did. “Cult. And no. Not recently. But I didn’t recognize the van.”

  “Ah. New. The old truck died and Deus suggested that we go for advertising on the sides.” He looked proud. “My boy’s gonna be great when he takes over the business.”

  “Set a spell. I’ll get that tea.”

  Thad took a seat and I reentered the too-hot house. I put the shotgun and my weapon harness on the kitchen table. Not something I’d have done if Mud was here, but it was expedient. I poured sun tea from the fridge, added ice cubes to the glasses, and dropped sprigs of fresh lemon mint into a small bowl. I put everything on a tray and added a small jar of simple syrup, spoons, and cloth napkins. Back on the porch, I put the tray on a small table and said, “The tea isn’t sweet. But there’s sugar syrup.”

  “Sister Nell, in this heat, the cold is what I’m after.” He took a glass and held it to his dark-skinned face. “Ahhh. That’s nice.” He sipped the tea. “And delicious, just like it is, though I have family who would skin me if they heard me say unsweetened tea was good.”

  “Me too.” Ignoring the swing, I took another chair, sat, and sipped my tea. I twisted two mint leaves and dropped them in. Tasted. Better, I decided. The cold was refreshing.

  After the socially appropriate time to enjoy the tea, Thad opened our conversation with, “This heat is a killer.”

  I nodded. “It is a hot one.” In the South, weather was an acceptable topic of discussion in every social situation, appropriate for business, politics, friendship, finances, therapy, courting, and religion. I didn’t know which direction he was going, but opening with the weather meant that I was ready with an appropriate social rejoinder.

  “I got your message about improvements for the house. I’ll have you an estimate by the end of the week,” he said. “I’ve got the measurements on file and can pull permits at any time.”

  I nodded. I planned to petition the courts to have my sister come live with me, and for that, my house needed things most people took for granted, like updated electricity, a bathroom upstairs, all sorts of things. I had thought Brother Thad might be here to bring me an estimate, but it seemed I was wrong.

  He continued. “It’s going to be even hotter by the end of the week. How you holding up with just the window unit and the fans?”

  It hit me what he was asking and my eyes flooded with tears at his kindness. “Oh. Brother Thad. Are you here to check on a widder-woman?”

  “Of course, Sister Nell. How you holding up?” It was what the men in his church did. They made sure the people in their congregation were safe. I had only been to his church a few times, but … it seemed I might now be listed among the people the men of his church took care of.

  “I’m … I’m good.” I dipped my head and stared into the tea as I blinked my tears away. Being taken care of wasn’t something I had much experience with. In the confines of God’s Glory, a man took care of a woman’s needs as part of a sexual contract, favor for favor at best. This was something different. This was kindness. “The heat’s manageable.”

  “And next week?” he asked. “Heat index is going to rise considerably.”

  “Next week I may close off the upstairs and my room, put the window unit in the front window”—I thumbed at the window to my side—“and sleep on the sofa. Or in the hammock on the back porch.”

  Sweat sliding down his cheeks and neck and into his collar, Brother Thad nodded. Sipped. “That’s good. That’s good. You need me, you call me.”

  “I will. Thank you, Brother Thad.”

  “You get ready to …” His words trailed away and he started again. “You ever decide to install more solar panels and upgrade the current system, I’ll give you a fair bid.”

  “I know that, Brother Thad,” I said, not sure why he had phrased it that way. Rankin’s was the only company I had ever used.

  “Mighty pretty here. Peaceful.” He was staring out over the property, deep into my old-growth trees, which had not been so large when he first began to come visit me. I wondered what he was thinking about my land, but if he had been about to speak of it he changed his mind and stood. “You have a nice day, Sister Nell.”

  “And you, Brother Thad.” I watched him walk to his van. Felt his vehicle roll down the mountain and off of Soulwood.

  THREE

  Esther and her husband dropped Mud off at the house at four p.m. and drove off in their truck before I could even get to the door. Esther hadn’t talked to me since I admitted to my family that I was part tree and that I thought she might be too. She hadn’t admitted a thing to anyone about whether she grew leaves or not, but refusing to talk to me suggested Esther was hiding something, running away from a difficult truth. It hurt. I figured it always would. But too much water and blood and time had flowed under the bridge for my family to fully trust me. And Esther, if she was a plant-person like me, had too much church conditioning to adjust to being nonhuman.

  I opened the door to see Mud trudging up the steps, her dress soaked with sweat and streaked with dirt, her fingernails crusted with black rings, and her bunned-up hair half-fallen down one side. In both hands were damp paper bags with green leaves growing out of the tops. “Let me guess,” I said. “You spent the day in the greenhouse.”

  “It was wonderful! They got fourteen kinds of basil growing. Fourteen! And they got thirty kinds of sage. Did you’un know there’s over two hundred kinds of sage?” She reached the porch and started into the house.

  “Boots,” I said.

  “Oh. Right. Here.” She thrust the paper bags of cuttings at me and dropped to her backside to tug off her boots. Her fingers hit mine and her excitement and contentment and pleasure zinged across the brief connection. The emotions I felt from her touch were all braided together in a jubilant delight that called to me of joy and fecundity and life. “But,” she grunted as she yanked at a boot, “I need to get the cuttings in water. Is it okay if I pot-plant ’em when they root?”

  “Sure. What do you have?” I closed the door on the heat and Mud followed me to the kitchen.

  “Basils and sages and stuff, plants to look pretty and to eat too. Raspberry Delight and Blue Steel Russian and Pineapple and Scarlet and Grape. Grape sage gets big, so it has to go in the garden.”

  “We can try to overwinter them on the front porch, but they may not survive.” I placed the bags in the kitchen sink near the herbs and veggies I had brought in earlier, and opened the paper. The rich scent of sage leaves spilled out and filled the room. The spicy scent of Thai and lemon basils added to the mélange of fragrances. I separated the plants and lifted down narrow-necked vases and cups with broken handles and other g
ood rooting dishes. I hadn’t cleaned my own veggies beyond hosing them off outside, or dealt with the cuttings I had brought in, so I piled everything together, turned on the water, and went to work.

  “We could cover ’em with plastic on cold days and nights,” Mud said, “or …” She stopped. Her color went high, her face bright red, and not with sunburn.

  My hands stilled all by themselves and my body hung loose as if I was about to face a fight. “Or what?”

  “Or we could build a greenhouse,” she whispered. It was the tone of a faithful supplicant in a cathedral, one full of reverence, hope, and not a little awe.

  I went back to separating the plants and snipping off the bases of the stems, removing leaves to create a good spot for roots to start, and putting all the leftover green matter in the compost bucket. Carefully, to keep from getting Mud’s hopes up, I said, “I’ve considered a greenhouse. But this is a hard time to build one for lots of reasons. You’re starting school, we have a court date to be set, we have to consider child care, I have cases at work, we’re learning how to live together. A proper greenhouse is expensive.”

  “Them’s all problems we can deal with,” she said earnestly. “If we had a greenhouse, I could practice my growing skills and we could have plants ready for the ground in spring. We could have fresh lettuces all winter. And tomatoes starting early. Please, please, please!” Hope and groveling laced all through her words and tone.

  I never wanted my sister to grovel or beg me for anything. Women were used to begging in the church. Asking was okay. Begging was for victims. “I’m thinking about it. But it’s costly, Mud.”

  “Not if Sam and Daddy build it.”

  We both went still and silent. When I could move again, I put three basils into vases. Fivesages, then three more basils. I separated my mints and put them into a separate shallow bowl. Softly, I said, “Daddy and Sam still want us in the church.”

  “Nope. You grow leaves,” Mud said with satisfaction, “and I might.”

  I studied my sister as my fingers continued to separate plants, working by muscle memory. Mud was dirty and tired and full of both angst and animation, what churchwomen might refer to as “being fraught.”

  “You think they want to help us but not bring us back into the church because I grow leaves.”

  “I think they want to keep an eye on us because they have future generations to look at and their young’uns might grow leaves too. I’m thinking they want to have a safe place for their plant-people to live if necessary. I’m thinking we’uns—sorry—we need to make hay while the sun shines. I’m thinking we need to get a greenhouse outta their worry.”

  “That’s very Machiavellian of you, sister mine.”

  “That sounds like a dirty word, but if’n I get a greenhouse outta that, then I’m okay with it.”

  I chuckled and placed the last cutting into a canning jar. I washed my veggies and set them aside. Washed my hands. I looked at the water pouring from the sink and sighed. If we got a greenhouse, I would need a separate cistern since my well was wind powered and a slow draw. A separate system was costly. I shut off the water. “I’m okay with family—but only family—providing labor for a greenhouse. But I have to be able to pay for the supplies, materials, equipment, and any nonfamily labor.”

  “Deal,” Mud said instantly, digging in a dirty pocket. “Sam came up with a … not a bid, but a materials and cost list.” A grin that might have riven the Red Sea split her face.

  I took the folded piece of paper. There were three columns listing prices and materials, based on the size and type of greenhouse. The totals made my heart pound. “I’ll think about it,” I managed. What I was thinking? Even the smallest greenhouse was sooo much money!

  Nell said, “I gotta shower. Then I gotta tell you’un about the vampire tree. It’s been retreating for months and last night it let the bulldozer go. And it ain’t ate—hasn’t eaten?—an animal in weeks!”

  • • •

  Mud was determined to get a greenhouse. Family discussions were hard, despite the fact that there were only two of us. Mud had the ability of most churchwomen to finagle, manipulate, and guilt me into too much. I’d been raised the same way myself, but years living with John and Leah, my husband’s senior wife, and years more on my own, had dulled my abilities to wheedle to get my way. It wasn’t an ability that I particularly wanted to encourage in either of us. It was a cult woman’s way—a victim’s way—of negotiating in a household where multiple wives had no control over the purse strings.

  I’d been working to get Mud to understand the difference between negotiation and wheedling and was making progress. For that reason—or that’s what I told myself—I let Mud talk to me about the possibility of a greenhouse. “Not one a them little ones neither, but a proper greenhouse,” she insisted, tapping the kitchen table with her fingertip on each of the last four syllables.

  “Oh?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant. Mud wanted a church-style greenhouse—a twenty-by-forty-foot structure, dug down into the soil, with French drains, cement-block foundation, galvanized steel supports, raised beds, a working water supply, a planting station, shades to block extreme heat and sun, easy-to-open vents, and eight-millimeter twin-wall polycarbonate cover material. A proper greenhouse had been my dream for years, and so I let her talk, showing me illustrations on her new computer tablet, having fun with a device that had scared her silly the first time she held it, only a week or so past.

  “There’s lots of reasons to build a proper one. Logical reasons,” she concluded.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We can save money by growing our own food.” Finger tapping with each point, she continued. “We can trade veggies for half a pig in the fall like Mama does.” Tap. “We can sell veggies at Old Lady Stevens’ and Sister Erasmus’ market”—tap—“and at the town farmers’ market on Wednesdays.” Tap. “And we can show the lawyer and the judge how we can eat cheap and fresh. That’ll make ’em feel good about you getting custody of me.”

  “Now you’re pulling out the big guns,” I said, secretly amused, and pleased that there had been no whining. Yet. “We’d have to go into debt,” I said.

  That shut Mud up. Debt was against everything the church taught.

  “I’d have to get a loan,” I said, “and the supplies you’re suggesting would run me a good ten thousand dollars, Mud. For ten thousand, we can buy from the church and still eat organic, still put up veggies and fruit. Ten thousand is a lot of money, and we’d still need to buy seeds and plants and roots. And we still need to address upgrades for the house like air-conditioning and a real hot water heater and a redesigned bathroom and laundry room and maybe even central heat. And add to that the cost of child care until you reach the age of sixteen.”

  “I don’t need no child care.”

  “You can’t be here alone at night if I’m out at work. It’s expensive. We need all that to make this place a proper home for you, according to what the court is likely to require. That’s a much bigger part of the custody problem than not having a greenhouse.”

  “I reckon that’s a lot.”

  “It is. And it’s what it’ll take to bring us into the twenty-first century.” I studied my sister and said, “I have the list of upgrades to the house suggested by the lawyer. Brother Thad will have me an estimate soon.”

  Mud took a breath as if diving into deep water. “You make more’n fifty thousand dollars a year,” she said, looking at her hands tightening into fists on the kitchen table. “And your living costs last year were around fifteen thousand. You being a tree for six months meant your income was less—due to you bein’ on disability and everything. But your cost of living while you were a tree was negalable so you came out ahead.”

  Oho. “Negligible,” I corrected, wondering how Mud had figured out all this. JoJo had hacked into my accounts and paid my few bills while I was out on “disability,” but Jo would never give out my private information. My family thought I had b
een undercover, not on disability. The story had been a total fabrication to appease the Nicholsons until a solution could be found for calling me back from being a tree. Only Mud had known, and she must have gone through my bills, my bank statements, my mail, all my financial papers. “Somebody’s been sneaking around, searching through my financial records.”

  Mud blushed at the accusation, though she looked more defiant than ashamed.

  “And talking to an adult who surely gave you the logic and reason for this argument.”

  “I ain’t told nobody. I sneaked through your’n private papers while you was supposedly undercover.”

  My sister had just called me a lying sneak. Interesting. I leaned over the counter, bracing my elbows on the top.

  “Then I got Sam to take me to the library and your friend there helped me research what happens to the money when a government employee goes on disability. When I knew most everything I could find, I added up all the money on the calculator on your computer, so I know everything. I should be ashamed.” Her face went mulish and she plowed on. “But I ain’t. Not really. I want a greenhouse.”

  “And now we have the change in tone that says you’re trying to get your way as opposed to us working together, making good decisions for our family.”

  Mud looked up at me with a fierce delight in her eyes. I had a sudden fear that I was about to be bested at this discussion.

  “If I’m supposed to make good decisions, then I needed all the information to make them. Knowing family income is part of that decision making.” Mud’s glee spread. “That there? That’s what’s called being hoisted on your own petard.” When I didn’t reply she went on. “Petard sounds nasty, but it ain’t. What you’un did? Saying you’un was wantin’ me to be a modern woman all the while keeping me in the dark? That there is what a churchman would do.”